Tahini Regini (Updated!)
Including a correction
Hi, everyone! I’m sending an updated Tahini Regini recipe — there was an omission in step two in the instructions yesterday (the baking powder should have been listed there too). The original post is updated, but here it is in your inbox as well in case that’s how you like to reference recipes.
xx
Susan
Tahini Regini
Makes about 2 dozen
½ cup sesame seeds
2 cups/256 g all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon/112 g granulated sugar
Grated zest of 1 large navel orange
½ teaspoon anise seeds
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 tablespoons/56 g cold unsalted butter, cut up
3 tablespoons tahini
2 large eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup whole milk
Heat oven to 350℉. Toast the sesame seeds on a small sheet pan, shaking occasionally until evenly one shade darker, 12 to 16 minutes. Transfer to a bowl to cool.
Combine flour, sugar, orange zest, anise seeds, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and tahini and pulse until fine crumbs form. Add the eggs and vanilla and pulse until a dough forms. Transfer to a bowl, knead a few times to make sure everything is well mixed, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for about 30 minutes (or as long as 2 days ahead).
Pour the milk into a shallow bowl, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Pinch off a ball of dough (23 g if you’re weighing), and roll it into a round ball between your palms. Then roll back and forth between your palms to form it into an oval shape.
Plop it into the milk, and then into the sesame seeds. Coat the dough ball with sesame seeds by gently shaking the bowl. Repeat with all of the dough, setting the coated cookies about 2 inches apart on the baking sheets.
Bake both sheets, placing one in the top third and the other in the bottom third of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until turning golden at the edges and on the bottom. Reverse positions of the baking sheets from front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking time.
Remove cookies from the baking sheets to a wire rack to cool completely, then store airtight for a week or two. You can freeze them for longer.
I just made these, and bravo - what a regal little cookie. Biscotti vibes, but so much easier.
I've added these (along with lemon shortbread and cornmeal thumbprints) to my lengthy Christmas Cookie Google Doc. I've been a cookie baker for a lot of decades (in December there's always a stack of butter softening on the kitchen counter). Each year I add at least one new variety and, if the reception it receives warrants it, that recipe makes it to the yearly list. You, Susan, have been reliable: Last year it was the pistachio cookies with lemon curd (now forever on the list) and the year before, the Moroccan-inspired Pistachios Cookies with rose petals—also now a permanent fixture!